Shooting a Basketball Game using a Prosumer S9500

[kyo86sg]

As of above, i am not sure how to shoot a sports game, where the player jump into the air or bouncing the ball....wat must i change? the kind of pictures are all blured. Shutter Priority? sorry really noob here.

[Youhong]

You may want to use the preset "SPORTS" mode... From there, take note of the shutter speed the camera uses... and other things such as focusing etc....

[Clockunder]

Originally Posted by kyo86sg As of above, i am not sure how to shoot a sports game, where the player jump into the air or bouncing the ball....wat must i change? the kind of pictures are all blured. Shutter Priority? sorry really noob here.

May be you could show us a picture.

I think it's motion blur and possibly even handshake blur if you're not careful about shutter speed vis-a-vis focal length.

To avoid motion blur, you need 1/250 or possibly higher shutter speed to freeze the ball and players.

That probably means you need to open up your aperture as much as possible and use ISO 1600 for your camera.

In order to allow more light into your lens, try not to zoom in too much but shoot nearer to the action instead. Not zooming in would also allow a smaller F stop (i.e. larger aperture relative to focal length), thus enabling a higher shutter speed.

The light condition in indoor basketball game is usually so low that you would need very large aperture such as F/2.8 and very high ISO in order to get fast enough shutter speed. My prosumer camera Nikon 5700 cannot make it. The following picture (no post processing except resized down) was taken when I was just 5 months after getting my camera and trying out the camera on indoor basketball to test the light condition there and what kind of shutter speed is required to freeze actions :

Shutter Priority mode : 1/125 (which was still too slow to freeze the ball and fast moving players' hands and legs).
Focal length 22.3mm (88mm on 35mm format equivalent as I already tried not to zoom in too much)
F/3.5 (the biggest aperture at this focal length)
ISO : 800 (the max. so that there is enough exposure at 1/125 but extremely noisy for my old cam).